I just looked at my rank on the leaderboards. For most enemies defeated I am ranked 22299 with a whopping 5 kills. I don't see how there can be that many people actually playing the game when I just start a character and i'm ranked that low?
Actually SOE is not doing well at all. Since their halcyon days with EQ, their days of having any thoughts of dominance in this genre are long gone. While Free Realms is a well done kids game, kids at that level do not have access to that much cash, so I would like to know where you think all this money from Free Realms is flowing from?
Okay just point me to the Empirical evidence that they aren't doing well and you will have validity. They just hired a very good friend of mine away from DC Comics, and he is quite happy with the compensation package as well as the Five year contract....Companies that aren't doing well don't do things like that.
Actually most of the MMO companies are doing fine and have seen little drop in revenue. Seems that the relatively cheap entertainment that a MMO offers is one of the last things cut. Yet SOE profits have dipped far more than any other.
I stand solidly behind my statement that SOE is not doing well at all. They are pinning their future on two games, both of which will have to be superb to garner the revenue gains they need.
This is not SOE bashing, just stating the facts as they exist. If I were Smedley, I would be looking for a new job.
Had to register just to post on this thread... I find it so inconcievable that such a huge collection of obviously smart people would overlook some of these more basic details:
1) SOE is not "Sony Corporation". Sony Online Entertainment is a subdivision of Sony, and even if "SONY" itself plummets to its doom, due to its own revenue and resources, SOE would stay alive and kicking. SOE could be making millions, and it would barely register a blip on the scale of billions that you see within that portfolio link.
2) Free Realms is a very heavily instanced game and has a notoriously horrible ranking system which has been bugged since day one. So judging the subscription based on what you see in a particular zone or what ranking you are is very subjective and will not give you an accurate read. Paying subscriptions are obviously well under 3 million, but the fact still remains that it has 3 million subscriptions.
3) You almost never see all the players located in the area you are at because a) The game doesn't render all of them unless you stand still for about 1 minute (cuts down on lag). b) Getting around the world is trivial. A person in front of you can port, directly to any other part of the world instantly. Hence the reason for A. c) There could be 10k people in the same area as you but they are all playing their own little game, which is heavily player side processed, which also removes any apparent lag that player in the base world would notice.
Had to register just to post on this thread... I find it so inconcievable that such a huge collection of obviously smart people would overlook some of these more basic details: 1) SOE is not "Sony Corporation". Sony Online Entertainment is a subdivision of Sony, and even if "SONY" itself plummets to its doom, due to its own revenue and resources, SOE would stay alive and kicking. SOE could be making millions, and it would barely register a blip on the scale of billions that you see within that portfolio link. 2) Free Realms is a very heavily instanced game and has a notoriously horrible ranking system which has been bugged since day one. So judging the subscription based on what you see in a particular zone or what ranking you are is very subjective and will not give you an accurate read. Paying subscriptions are obviously well under 3 million, but the fact still remains that it has 3 million subscriptions. 3) You almost never see all the players located in the area you are at because a) The game doesn't render all of them unless you stand still for about 1 minute (cuts down on lag). b) Getting around the world is trivial. A person in front of you can port, directly to any other part of the world instantly. Hence the reason for A. c) There could be 10k people in the same area as you but they are all playing their own little game, which is heavily player side processed, which also removes any apparent lag that player in the base world would notice.
Just to point out to you and mr. creditibility above...SOE is in a division that LOSES money. I suggest listening to their quarterly conference calls and review their filings.
SCE...the division that SOE is in within Sony LOST over 124 billion dollars last year. Granted most of that is due to the PS3 but it is still a huge loss.
Had to register just to post on this thread... I find it so inconcievable that such a huge collection of obviously smart people would overlook some of these more basic details: 1) SOE is not "Sony Corporation". Sony Online Entertainment is a subdivision of Sony, and even if "SONY" itself plummets to its doom, due to its own revenue and resources, SOE would stay alive and kicking. SOE could be making millions, and it would barely register a blip on the scale of billions that you see within that portfolio link. 2) Free Realms is a very heavily instanced game and has a notoriously horrible ranking system which has been bugged since day one. So judging the subscription based on what you see in a particular zone or what ranking you are is very subjective and will not give you an accurate read. Paying subscriptions are obviously well under 3 million, but the fact still remains that it has 3 million subscriptions. 3) You almost never see all the players located in the area you are at because a) The game doesn't render all of them unless you stand still for about 1 minute (cuts down on lag). b) Getting around the world is trivial. A person in front of you can port, directly to any other part of the world instantly. Hence the reason for A. c) There could be 10k people in the same area as you but they are all playing their own little game, which is heavily player side processed, which also removes any apparent lag that player in the base world would notice.
Just to point out to you and mr. creditibility above...SOE is in a division that LOSES money. I suggest listening to their quarterly conference calls and review their filings.
SCE...the division that SOE is in within Sony LOST over 124 billion dollars last year. Granted most of that is due to the PS3 but it is still a huge loss.
The point is that SOE is not the Parent company, nor is it the main component of SCEA. Each individual game under SOE has its own producer, staff and budget, and what a prior poster implied is that the friend that got hired into Free Realms should watch out for his job because SONY as a whole is not doing well. I just called BS on that, and also added comments that show why giving a subjective opinion on game population based on the mechanics of Free Realms will just not work.
On a side note, for a company to loose 124 billion and still stay afloat says alot about how much staying power it has.... Anyways, I am not advocating SONY, though it might seem that way. I am just clearing up some information that struck me.
Had to register just to post on this thread... I find it so inconcievable that such a huge collection of obviously smart people would overlook some of these more basic details: 1) SOE is not "Sony Corporation". Sony Online Entertainment is a subdivision of Sony, and even if "SONY" itself plummets to its doom, due to its own revenue and resources, SOE would stay alive and kicking. SOE could be making millions, and it would barely register a blip on the scale of billions that you see within that portfolio link. 2) Free Realms is a very heavily instanced game and has a notoriously horrible ranking system which has been bugged since day one. So judging the subscription based on what you see in a particular zone or what ranking you are is very subjective and will not give you an accurate read. Paying subscriptions are obviously well under 3 million, but the fact still remains that it has 3 million subscriptions. 3) You almost never see all the players located in the area you are at because a) The game doesn't render all of them unless you stand still for about 1 minute (cuts down on lag). b) Getting around the world is trivial. A person in front of you can port, directly to any other part of the world instantly. Hence the reason for A. c) There could be 10k people in the same area as you but they are all playing their own little game, which is heavily player side processed, which also removes any apparent lag that player in the base world would notice.
Just to point out to you and mr. creditibility above...SOE is in a division that LOSES money. I suggest listening to their quarterly conference calls and review their filings.
SCE...the division that SOE is in within Sony LOST over 124 billion dollars last year. Granted most of that is due to the PS3 but it is still a huge loss.
The point is that SOE is not the Parent company, nor is it the main component of SCEA. Each individual game under SOE has its own producer, staff and budget, and what a prior poster implied is that the friend that got hired into Free Realms should watch out for his job because SONY as a whole is not doing well. I just called BS on that, and also added comments that show why giving a subjective opinion on game population based on the mechanics of Free Realms will just not work.
On a side note, for a company to loose 124 billion and still stay afloat says alot about how much staying power it has.... Anyways, I am not advocating SONY, though it might seem that way. I am just clearing up some information that struck me.
When a company is losing money like Sony is...all divisions are affected.
Originally posted by Daffid011 Care to disprove anything I have said? Please feel free to point out my lies instead of lumping me into a group.
Care to prove anything you said? Lol
Since you ask and maybe scoff, I have not problem backing up what I claim. All of thise is easily found with a few google searches in under a few minutes.
1,000,000 players divided by 16 days = average 62,500 new players joining every day
58,823 players didived by 10 servers = average 6,250 new players joining each server every day.
A quote from the press release that is important
Today we are proud to announce that since our launch on April 28th, 2009 more than three million unique users have registered for Free Realms.
3 million unique players over the 46 days covered = 65,217 new players joining every day. 6,500 new player each day per server. (I originally counted 47 days as I thought the press release on April 26th was the release date.)
All of the above is just taking the numbers that soe has released and applying averages to them. Nothing is being twisted or turned. Those are the facts that soe is presenting and I cannot change those in any way.
Some other interesting points to note:
How big is the game world?
Here is how long it takes to travel by foot from the furthest points on the map without any mounts or boosts to travel speed.
Free realms: Most distant point north to south - 8 minutes. Furthest East to west - 13 minutes
Hellfire peninsula in world of warcraft: North to south - 6 minutes, East to west - 10 minutes
While not 100% scientific, it shows just how small the entire world of free realms is in comparison and that is all the game offers to support a playerbase sized in the millions.
There are 10 servers before and after soe stopped displaying server population status shortly after the 1 million mark.
The list does not raise or shrink dynamically and the common world area is not instanced within the game like conan or guild wars when to many players are in one place. Free realms has just 1 server for every 300,000 unique players.
To contrast that.
When warcraft hit 10 million subscribers in January 2008 [ eu.blizzard.com/en/press/080122.html ], blizzard stated North America had 2.5 million subscribers and warcraft currently has 240 north american servers [ www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/ ] That puts the ratio of accounts to servers somewhere around 10,000 to 1. (note that is not saying 2.5 million unique players either, just accounts)
I hope that answers your question and as I said earlier, anyone is welcome to point out anything that resembles a lie or misconceptions I might have. That is what these forums are for and I'm big enough to admit when I make a mistake and learn something in the process.
Here is a return question for you. Considering the above information, do you find it believable that 10 servers can service the number of unique players that soe says are registering for free realms every day?
**snip** Here is a return question for you. Considering the above information, do you find it believable that 10 servers can service the number of unique players that soe says are registering for free realms every day?
Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
It's a Jeep thing. . . _______ |___| \_______/ = |||||| = |X| \*........*/ |X| |X|_________|X| You wouldn't understand
**snip** Here is a return question for you. Considering the above information, do you find it believable that 10 servers can service the number of unique players that soe says are registering for free realms every day?
Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
Just look at the numbers for yourself and make your own conclusions. I stated my conclusion and when someone challenged me to back that up with some proof I did so. I don't need you to believe me as you can look at the numbers from soe for yourself.
If all you want to do is analyze the person and not the issues, then you can find speculation for agenda or implied emotion in everything. If that is all you have to offer to the conversation then please spare us the bandwidth.
Here is a return question for you. Considering the above information, do you find it believable that 10 servers can service the number of unique players that soe says are registering for free realms every day?
I dont see problem with such numbers. Especially in this type of game. And also those 3M doesnt say active, how much time they spend online, how many accounts people have, what is main timezone or maybe players are almost evenly distributed accros world. I guess some old SOE fans even could enter FreeRealms, see tutorial quest where you turn in mob, puke and quit. And yet it counts like another player. I join like once a few days now to play few minigames and I am counting like normal player. Also children dont usually get much playtime with computer... There is many reason why it can have 3M players.
And from your numbers new account must be created every 15 seconds. It is really possible.
Also even though it sort of web based but I would prefer to download it. As sometimes I got like 10-20mb of info and stopped w hile loading, and new mb adds and it took ~5-10mins. Really annoying. And dont say my internet is shit, it is above average in my country.
what are you all arguing about.. its registered users.. ever.. its not ones who creater char.. or even logged in the game..
its not the 3 mln active users. not 3 mln subs.. not 3 mln paying subs. its 3 mln which susrcribed. for all the right reason.. i doubt game have more than 50k active users. so who cares in 3 more years, they will say the yhave 50 mln users.. and still count your account.. even if you never logged in or even creater char or wtf is in the game..
**snip** Here is a return question for you. Considering the above information, do you find it believable that 10 servers can service the number of unique players that soe says are registering for free realms every day?
Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
Just look at the numbers for yourself and make your own conclusions. I stated my conclusion and when someone challenged me to back that up with some proof I did so. I don't need you to believe me as you can look at the numbers from soe for yourself.
If all you want to do is analyze the person and not the issues, then you can find speculation for agenda or implied emotion in everything. If that is all you have to offer to the conversation then please spare us the bandwidth.
Proof to your speculation? Does that even make sense? You have no inside information so until then you have no "proof" only more guesswork.
It's a Jeep thing. . . _______ |___| \_______/ = |||||| = |X| \*........*/ |X| |X|_________|X| You wouldn't understand
Originally posted by Locklain Proof to your speculation? Does that even make sense? You have no inside information so until then you have no "proof" only more guesswork.
Sorry, I will be more clear. Someone accused me of lieing and making up information that I based my conclusions on. Someone else asked me to show the proof of the numbers I was posting, to which I did above.
There you have it, proof of the information that I posted and the conclusion I made based on that information both being seperate entities. For the record, I never claimed to have an inside source. Try not to put words in my mouth ok?
And from your numbers new account must be created every 15 seconds. It is really possible. Also even though it sort of web based but I would prefer to download it. As sometimes I got like 10-20mb of info and stopped w hile loading, and new mb adds and it took ~5-10mins. Really annoying. And dont say my internet is shit, it is above average in my country.
If you think the numbers are possible, go to the spot where new characters log in and have a look for yourself. Take a few minutes and see what you think after that. 75% of the people signing up are 17 and under so they should be on during daylight hours mostly. New character logins should be far above the average at that time.
Just look at the starting area and tell me if you think there are more than 20 total people there just starting the game. That is only a few minutes worth of players and most of which should still be reading the instructions that pop up when you log in.
I have a question, and this seems like the right thread.
Does anyone have any idea about how many users logged in to collect the 3M subscriber bonus package thingy? Have they released those numbers in the past? I was just wondering because I think you had 10-14 days to collect the reward and that would be a good indication of how many people log-in regularly.
My niece loves the game btw. It made babysitting super easy i must say! =D
If you think the numbers are possible, go to the spot where new characters log in and have a look for yourself. Take a few minutes and see what you think after that
I'm sure some people quit at an early stage of a game, but that would be normal for any mmo trial. I will have to peek at the new user log in locations, thanks for the heads up. Also, No soe never claimed a user had to actually try the game to be counted, but then how many people have to not try your game to have these numbers and not add a server for the last 2 million users? Why did soe nearly double the number of release servers during the first million users, but nothing since then?
Imagine you played any of the following games. LOTRO (11 us servers), City of Heroes (11 servers), Age of Conan (8 servers), Warhammer online (15 us servers). You had not played them for a month and a half.
Then one day you read that your game of choice had a population explosion and over 500,000 people were joining the game (us version) every single week for a month and a half. You think to yourself, hey I will log back in and see how the game is doing. When you do log in you notice there are no new servers, in game population looks no different than it did a month ago and the game is still rather empty of players. You are surprised, because according to the company 75% of those people they claim are users fall under the age of 17 so they should be logging in during after school hours, but still nothing.
Somehow I suspect if turbine, mythic, ncsoft or funcom was making these types of claims that soe is making people would not buy it for a moment. I suspect people wouldn't be making excuses that the games are instanced so you can't see people, the game engine doesn't render other characters to reduce lag, players don't play 24/7, people go to a website and register for a game they will never play or any of the other rationale being used to avoid looking objectively at the data.
Yet somehow people want to belive that a game that has a gameworld which would struggle to fill 10% the size of any of those other games is somehow doing just that.
If you think the numbers are possible, go to the spot where new characters log in and have a look for yourself. Take a few minutes and see what you think after that
I've never seen SOE claiming a person has to create a avatar to be counted
(and if im wrong - please show me a link stating otherwise)
likely they only have to create an account
some players may quit after seeing the Character Customization screen
Hehe yah, didn't even think about that
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site : http://mmodata.blogspot.be/ Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
As mentioned many times in this thread, you have to take the numbers for what they are : registered accounts, and as Nadia cleverly mentioned, people don't even need to login, let alone play the game, they only have to create an account.
WoW most likely have more than 50 million registered accounts ( hmm I wonder if I can get my hands on the number of registered accounts from WoW, just curious )
It would be stupid for SOE to lie about a number that means very little.
They should give us some real numbers, like Active Players.
Second Life for example gives us MUURL numbers, Monthly Unique User Repeat Logins, which means players have to login at least twice per month to be counted, and new accounts for that month don't count. Now that is something substantial.
Even better would be the number of MUURL that also bought for at least 5€ items or services ( if we talk about RMT games where we don't have subscriptions ), then we could compare them against subscription based games like WoW.
But they probably won't do that, because it seems that they just don't have that many active players.
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site : http://mmodata.blogspot.be/ Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
**snip** Here is a return question for you. Considering the above information, do you find it believable that 10 servers can service the number of unique players that soe says are registering for free realms every day?
Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
The only one with an agenda here it seems is you. Dedicated to supporting shoddy marketing hype verses real life facts.
It would be stupid for SOE to lie about a number that means very little. They should give us some real numbers, like Active Players.
This is a case of perception vs reality.
Which statement would make freerealms look more successful and get them more story coverage on gaming sites? 3 million unique users or 100,000 paying customers?
Claiming 3 million users has web sites talking about breaking records and how well the game is doing. If they said something like 100,000 paying customers then sites would wonder what is holding the game back and why it isn't doing better. More stories would be about what is lacking. 100,000 subscribers isn't really the bench mark for success that it once was.
Instead of real numbers we get numbers that don't represent reality. Numbers that people are openly admitting can represent people that have never even tried the game, but at the same time believe can be supported by only 10 servers. It is very clever on the part of soe from a marketing point of view, except the numbers they are posting could not possibly be supported by their servers and gameworld size.
It is very clever on the part of soe from a marketing point of view, except the numbers they are posting could not possibly be supported by their servers and gameworld size.
and this is different from any other Free to play game - how?
Free to play games make publicity announcements about registered users
- I dont know of any other "proof" beyond their press releases
Comments
I just looked at my rank on the leaderboards. For most enemies defeated I am ranked 22299 with a whopping 5 kills. I don't see how there can be that many people actually playing the game when I just start a character and i'm ranked that low?
Okay just point me to the Empirical evidence that they aren't doing well and you will have validity. They just hired a very good friend of mine away from DC Comics, and he is quite happy with the compensation package as well as the Five year contract....Companies that aren't doing well don't do things like that.
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/StockNet/quarterly.aspx?Country=USA&Symbol=SNE
Not pretty.
BTW...contracts don't mean anything anymore. Ask the corporate bond holders of Chrysler how much a contract is worth as of 2009.
Take the time to learn what you are talking about before posting. You just blew any credibility you may have had with that link. Use your head.
Net Income
Current $Mil 254.0 306.0 182.0 91.0
% Change From Year Earlier --- -47.40 -71.80 -94.80
Earnings/Share
Current $ 27.68 33.28 19.83 9.98
% Change From Year Earlier --- -47.30 -71.70 -94.80
How did he blow his credibility? Their net income was cut in half during the course of 1 year.
You do realise the majority of companies have seen dips in income due to the recession over in your parts of the world, right?
Actually most of the MMO companies are doing fine and have seen little drop in revenue. Seems that the relatively cheap entertainment that a MMO offers is one of the last things cut. Yet SOE profits have dipped far more than any other.
I stand solidly behind my statement that SOE is not doing well at all. They are pinning their future on two games, both of which will have to be superb to garner the revenue gains they need.
This is not SOE bashing, just stating the facts as they exist. If I were Smedley, I would be looking for a new job.
Had to register just to post on this thread... I find it so inconcievable that such a huge collection of obviously smart people would overlook some of these more basic details:
1) SOE is not "Sony Corporation". Sony Online Entertainment is a subdivision of Sony, and even if "SONY" itself plummets to its doom, due to its own revenue and resources, SOE would stay alive and kicking. SOE could be making millions, and it would barely register a blip on the scale of billions that you see within that portfolio link.
2) Free Realms is a very heavily instanced game and has a notoriously horrible ranking system which has been bugged since day one. So judging the subscription based on what you see in a particular zone or what ranking you are is very subjective and will not give you an accurate read. Paying subscriptions are obviously well under 3 million, but the fact still remains that it has 3 million subscriptions.
3) You almost never see all the players located in the area you are at because a) The game doesn't render all of them unless you stand still for about 1 minute (cuts down on lag). b) Getting around the world is trivial. A person in front of you can port, directly to any other part of the world instantly. Hence the reason for A. c) There could be 10k people in the same area as you but they are all playing their own little game, which is heavily player side processed, which also removes any apparent lag that player in the base world would notice.
Just to point out to you and mr. creditibility above...SOE is in a division that LOSES money. I suggest listening to their quarterly conference calls and review their filings.
SCE...the division that SOE is in within Sony LOST over 124 billion dollars last year. Granted most of that is due to the PS3 but it is still a huge loss.
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Just to point out to you and mr. creditibility above...SOE is in a division that LOSES money. I suggest listening to their quarterly conference calls and review their filings.
SCE...the division that SOE is in within Sony LOST over 124 billion dollars last year. Granted most of that is due to the PS3 but it is still a huge loss.
The point is that SOE is not the Parent company, nor is it the main component of SCEA. Each individual game under SOE has its own producer, staff and budget, and what a prior poster implied is that the friend that got hired into Free Realms should watch out for his job because SONY as a whole is not doing well. I just called BS on that, and also added comments that show why giving a subjective opinion on game population based on the mechanics of Free Realms will just not work.
On a side note, for a company to loose 124 billion and still stay afloat says alot about how much staying power it has.... Anyways, I am not advocating SONY, though it might seem that way. I am just clearing up some information that struck me.
Just to point out to you and mr. creditibility above...SOE is in a division that LOSES money. I suggest listening to their quarterly conference calls and review their filings.
SCE...the division that SOE is in within Sony LOST over 124 billion dollars last year. Granted most of that is due to the PS3 but it is still a huge loss.
The point is that SOE is not the Parent company, nor is it the main component of SCEA. Each individual game under SOE has its own producer, staff and budget, and what a prior poster implied is that the friend that got hired into Free Realms should watch out for his job because SONY as a whole is not doing well. I just called BS on that, and also added comments that show why giving a subjective opinion on game population based on the mechanics of Free Realms will just not work.
On a side note, for a company to loose 124 billion and still stay afloat says alot about how much staying power it has.... Anyways, I am not advocating SONY, though it might seem that way. I am just clearing up some information that struck me.
When a company is losing money like Sony is...all divisions are affected.
--------
Ten Golden Rules Of Videogame Fanboyism
"SOE has probably united more gamers in hatred than Blizzard has subs"...daelnor
Care to prove anything you said? Lol
Since you ask and maybe scoff, I have not problem backing up what I claim. All of thise is easily found with a few google searches in under a few minutes.
Free realms releases Tuesday April 28th: [ www.massively.com/2009/04/27/free-realms-launches-tuesday/ ]
2 additional servers were added may 6th [ twitter.com/j_smedley/status/1730891591 ]
2 additional servers were added may 14th with promises of more to come [ twitter.com/j_smedley/status/1808881945 ]
1 Million players
17 days after release (May 14th) - Free realms hits 1,000,000 players registered [ www.freerealms.com/article/detail.action ]
Total number of servers active: 10
1,000,000 players divided by 17 days = average 58,823 new players joining every day
58,823 players didived by 10 servers = average 5,823 new players joining each server every day during this period.
2 million players
13 days later (May 27th) - Free realms hits 2,000,000 players registered [ www.massively.com/2009/05/28/over-2-million-now-served-in-free-realms/ ]
Total number of servers active: 10
1,000,000 players divided by 13 days = average 79,923 new players joining every day
58,823 players didived by 10 servers = average 7,923 new players joining each server every day for 13 straight days.
3 million players
16 days later (June 12th) - [ www.massively.com/2009/06/12/free-realms-breaks-the-3-million-mark/ ]
Total number of servers active: 10
1,000,000 players divided by 16 days = average 62,500 new players joining every day
58,823 players didived by 10 servers = average 6,250 new players joining each server every day.
A quote from the press release that is important
Today we are proud to announce that since our launch on April 28th, 2009 more than three million unique users have registered for Free Realms.
3 million unique players over the 46 days covered = 65,217 new players joining every day. 6,500 new player each day per server. (I originally counted 47 days as I thought the press release on April 26th was the release date.)
All of the above is just taking the numbers that soe has released and applying averages to them. Nothing is being twisted or turned. Those are the facts that soe is presenting and I cannot change those in any way.
Some other interesting points to note:
How big is the game world?
Here is how long it takes to travel by foot from the furthest points on the map without any mounts or boosts to travel speed.
Free realms: Most distant point north to south - 8 minutes. Furthest East to west - 13 minutes
Hellfire peninsula in world of warcraft: North to south - 6 minutes, East to west - 10 minutes
While not 100% scientific, it shows just how small the entire world of free realms is in comparison and that is all the game offers to support a playerbase sized in the millions.
There are 10 servers before and after soe stopped displaying server population status shortly after the 1 million mark.
The list does not raise or shrink dynamically and the common world area is not instanced within the game like conan or guild wars when to many players are in one place. Free realms has just 1 server for every 300,000 unique players.
To contrast that.
When warcraft hit 10 million subscribers in January 2008 [ eu.blizzard.com/en/press/080122.html ], blizzard stated North America had 2.5 million subscribers and warcraft currently has 240 north american servers [ www.worldofwarcraft.com/realmstatus/ ] That puts the ratio of accounts to servers somewhere around 10,000 to 1. (note that is not saying 2.5 million unique players either, just accounts)
I hope that answers your question and as I said earlier, anyone is welcome to point out anything that resembles a lie or misconceptions I might have. That is what these forums are for and I'm big enough to admit when I make a mistake and learn something in the process.
Here is a return question for you. Considering the above information, do you find it believable that 10 servers can service the number of unique players that soe says are registering for free realms every day?
Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
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Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
Just look at the numbers for yourself and make your own conclusions. I stated my conclusion and when someone challenged me to back that up with some proof I did so. I don't need you to believe me as you can look at the numbers from soe for yourself.
If all you want to do is analyze the person and not the issues, then you can find speculation for agenda or implied emotion in everything. If that is all you have to offer to the conversation then please spare us the bandwidth.
I dont see problem with such numbers. Especially in this type of game. And also those 3M doesnt say active, how much time they spend online, how many accounts people have, what is main timezone or maybe players are almost evenly distributed accros world. I guess some old SOE fans even could enter FreeRealms, see tutorial quest where you turn in mob, puke and quit. And yet it counts like another player. I join like once a few days now to play few minigames and I am counting like normal player. Also children dont usually get much playtime with computer... There is many reason why it can have 3M players.
And from your numbers new account must be created every 15 seconds. It is really possible.
Also even though it sort of web based but I would prefer to download it. As sometimes I got like 10-20mb of info and stopped w hile loading, and new mb adds and it took ~5-10mins. Really annoying. And dont say my internet is shit, it is above average in my country.
what are you all arguing about.. its registered users.. ever.. its not ones who creater char.. or even logged in the game..
its not the 3 mln active users. not 3 mln subs.. not 3 mln paying subs. its 3 mln which susrcribed. for all the right reason.. i doubt game have more than 50k active users. so who cares in 3 more years, they will say the yhave 50 mln users.. and still count your account.. even if you never logged in or even creater char or wtf is in the game..
Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
Just look at the numbers for yourself and make your own conclusions. I stated my conclusion and when someone challenged me to back that up with some proof I did so. I don't need you to believe me as you can look at the numbers from soe for yourself.
If all you want to do is analyze the person and not the issues, then you can find speculation for agenda or implied emotion in everything. If that is all you have to offer to the conversation then please spare us the bandwidth.
Proof to your speculation? Does that even make sense? You have no inside information so until then you have no "proof" only more guesswork.
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Sorry, I will be more clear. Someone accused me of lieing and making up information that I based my conclusions on. Someone else asked me to show the proof of the numbers I was posting, to which I did above.
There you have it, proof of the information that I posted and the conclusion I made based on that information both being seperate entities. For the record, I never claimed to have an inside source. Try not to put words in my mouth ok?
If you think the numbers are possible, go to the spot where new characters log in and have a look for yourself. Take a few minutes and see what you think after that. 75% of the people signing up are 17 and under so they should be on during daylight hours mostly. New character logins should be far above the average at that time.
Just look at the starting area and tell me if you think there are more than 20 total people there just starting the game. That is only a few minutes worth of players and most of which should still be reading the instructions that pop up when you log in.
I have a question, and this seems like the right thread.
Does anyone have any idea about how many users logged in to collect the 3M subscriber bonus package thingy? Have they released those numbers in the past? I was just wondering because I think you had 10-14 days to collect the reward and that would be a good indication of how many people log-in regularly.
My niece loves the game btw. It made babysitting super easy i must say! =D
there are 3 spawn spots for starting players
- crossroads, highroad junction, stillwater crossing
I've never seen SOE claiming a person has to create a avatar to be counted
(and if im wrong - please show me a link stating otherwise)
likely they only have to create an account
some players may quit after seeing the Character Customization screen
EQ2 fan sites
I'm sure some people quit at an early stage of a game, but that would be normal for any mmo trial. I will have to peek at the new user log in locations, thanks for the heads up. Also, No soe never claimed a user had to actually try the game to be counted, but then how many people have to not try your game to have these numbers and not add a server for the last 2 million users? Why did soe nearly double the number of release servers during the first million users, but nothing since then?
Imagine you played any of the following games. LOTRO (11 us servers), City of Heroes (11 servers), Age of Conan (8 servers), Warhammer online (15 us servers). You had not played them for a month and a half.
Then one day you read that your game of choice had a population explosion and over 500,000 people were joining the game (us version) every single week for a month and a half. You think to yourself, hey I will log back in and see how the game is doing. When you do log in you notice there are no new servers, in game population looks no different than it did a month ago and the game is still rather empty of players. You are surprised, because according to the company 75% of those people they claim are users fall under the age of 17 so they should be logging in during after school hours, but still nothing.
Somehow I suspect if turbine, mythic, ncsoft or funcom was making these types of claims that soe is making people would not buy it for a moment. I suspect people wouldn't be making excuses that the games are instanced so you can't see people, the game engine doesn't render other characters to reduce lag, players don't play 24/7, people go to a website and register for a game they will never play or any of the other rationale being used to avoid looking objectively at the data.
Yet somehow people want to belive that a game that has a gameworld which would struggle to fill 10% the size of any of those other games is somehow doing just that.
there are 3 spawn spots for starting players
- crossroads, highroad junction, stillwater crossing
I've never seen SOE claiming a person has to create a avatar to be counted
(and if im wrong - please show me a link stating otherwise)
likely they only have to create an account
some players may quit after seeing the Character Customization screen
Hehe yah, didn't even think about that
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
http://mmodata.blogspot.be/
Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
As mentioned many times in this thread, you have to take the numbers for what they are : registered accounts, and as Nadia cleverly mentioned, people don't even need to login, let alone play the game, they only have to create an account.
WoW most likely have more than 50 million registered accounts ( hmm I wonder if I can get my hands on the number of registered accounts from WoW, just curious )
It would be stupid for SOE to lie about a number that means very little.
They should give us some real numbers, like Active Players.
Second Life for example gives us MUURL numbers, Monthly Unique User Repeat Logins, which means players have to login at least twice per month to be counted, and new accounts for that month don't count. Now that is something substantial.
Even better would be the number of MUURL that also bought for at least 5€ items or services ( if we talk about RMT games where we don't have subscriptions ), then we could compare them against subscription based games like WoW.
But they probably won't do that, because it seems that they just don't have that many active players.
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
http://mmodata.blogspot.be/
Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
Give us a reason why we should believe some Joe Blow off the internetz that has some estimations and approximations over an official company statement.
Starting to sound like you have some kind of agenda to me . . . perhaps a little butt-hurt?
The only one with an agenda here it seems is you. Dedicated to supporting shoddy marketing hype verses real life facts.
This is a case of perception vs reality.
Which statement would make freerealms look more successful and get them more story coverage on gaming sites? 3 million unique users or 100,000 paying customers?
Claiming 3 million users has web sites talking about breaking records and how well the game is doing. If they said something like 100,000 paying customers then sites would wonder what is holding the game back and why it isn't doing better. More stories would be about what is lacking. 100,000 subscribers isn't really the bench mark for success that it once was.
Instead of real numbers we get numbers that don't represent reality. Numbers that people are openly admitting can represent people that have never even tried the game, but at the same time believe can be supported by only 10 servers. It is very clever on the part of soe from a marketing point of view, except the numbers they are posting could not possibly be supported by their servers and gameworld size.
and this is different from any other Free to play game - how?
Free to play games make publicity announcements about registered users
- I dont know of any other "proof" beyond their press releases
this goes beyond SOE and has for awhile
even Puzzle Pirates, claims 7 million registered
www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4046/what_are_the_rewards_of_.php
its not a meaningful number except when compared to other Free to Play games making similar announcements
- and even then, tells you zero about cash or real players the games are generating
EQ2 fan sites